Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

Ebook the Power of Ten 6: The First Month Part 2, is finally released on Amazon!

EBOOK SIX IS NOW OUT! The First Month, Part Two!

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A second later, the Bows of the king’s mother and daughter slapped into their hands, even before they could lunge for them, accompanying quivers hooking to their belts. Startled, they nevertheless drew and entered the Archer’s Stance, even as the kitchen door suddenly flew open loudly, despite no one being there.

Borelean spit the first unseen man through the liver, crouching as he did so. The man folded over him, eyes astonished as he appeared and died, and then two arrows drilled into nothing in midair, crimson popping up and something getting jerked to a halt by the impact.

Two Phantasmal Servants standing there with ewers of water calmly flung them at the doorway as the king rose, his face black with rage as he tossed off the quivering dying man there. Sheets of water droplets broke on unseen figures, soaking their clothing and making them quite visible as dripping sheets hovering in midair.

He chopped through the second man, who appeared about halfway to the ground as crimson jetted out his half-severed throat. A long lunge between two sheets of water, and another assassin was falling as the king dropped into a crouch again.

Two more arrows punched coolly into the fourth man’s sheets of sodden clothing, and he jerked and died as well.

Kris hit the hallway, her Null in front of her washing across the Invisible attackers and breaking their magic, revealing six of them, four trying to press past the two engaging the guards.

“Tremble,” she murmured, yet everyone heard it. Her pale violet eyes were aglow, and the gazes of the four bulged in terror as Lost Light rose and swirled and came in, on, and through them.

Then she was somehow on the other side of them, and heads were falling from shoulders, blood somehow not spurting out, and five bodies crumpled to the ground in astonishment.

The last one was engaged with an infuriated, roaring guard, who was proceeding to beat him and his curved sword down with murderous intensity and skill. The killer looked back, only to find Kris slowly turning to stare at him from between him and his way out.

The decision to sell himself was made just as the other guard cut into his leg, and his stance crumpled. He wasn’t to the floor before the sword in his opponent’s grasp smashed his weakened parry aside and buried itself in the side of his head, a sickening crack echoing in the narrow hallway as his neck broke.

There was a tinkle as glass broke on the sun roof above, a black Wand extending through. A second later, it belched out an expanding ball of black flames which would fill the entire room here and turn it into an inferno.

Or it would have, if I hadn’t idly Countered it.

The Queen Mother and Royal Princess shifted targets up in tandem, and their Bows thrummed together. There was a guttural cry as glass shattered again, the black figure above falling away as they lost their grip on the Wand and it tumbled through, caught by Zeks just inches from the floor.

I noticed one of the guards was very red in the face as he wrenched his sword free of the skull of the attackers. He turned to look at me, and I just nodded at him. He slumped into the wall in relief, tears coming down his face as he began to sob uncontrollably.

His reaction didn’t escape the keen eyes of the Queen Mother. “What is the matter with Sir Darvis?” she asked quickly.

“The assassins kidnapped his wife and son and sent him her hand with their wedding ring on it to indicate they meant business,” I replied, and her eyes widened in shock and outrage. “Lord Mick and a team of Aun Hunters got to them thirty minutes ago, and they are fine… as is Lord Gerschwin’s paramour.”

King Borelean heard it all, because I wasn’t hiding it, but still took the opportunity to make sure there was no one else lurking in the kitchen.

“It’s clear, Your Majesty. We’ve got Scouts tracking the mage, although she doesn’t know it yet.” Kris glided back into the room, unmarked by any of the blood or anything, looking like she’d just strolled in from a light walk.

“I could not help but notice the swords did a fine job of killing those two men,” the King noted, raising his hand towards the welt on his cheek tellingly.

“I Nulled the Infusion when I grabbed both blades,” Kris replied calmly, as if discussing the weather. “My apologies for not warning you ahead of time. We drew the meal out a bit longer than was truly needed to give Lord Mick and his friends time to get into position and take out the Tanada safehouse, and with the Invisible watcher up above, wanted everything to appear sincere and unremarkable.”

“The Tanada, here?” hissed Princess Fan, an arrow still nocked and ready to draw. “I’d hoped them dead during the Fall, father!”

“It appears they still loathe your mother’s clan, Fan,” the king answered grimly. His eyes were on his compromised bodyguard, who refused to meet his eyes. “Thank you for making sure my man was not forced to break his oaths,” he told Kris calmly, earning a heads-up look of gratitude from the man.

“Happy to do so, Your Majesty.” Her eyes fell on the Wand Zeks had caught just before it hit the ground. “Something special, Ryin?”

I eyed the thing carved from some really fine obsidian with a shadow-filled red garnet topping it, the whole thing filled with fire mana. “This thing shot out a Blackfire Fireball,” I informed her.

“Not a Firebolt?” Kris blinked. “Or Deathbolt, as the case may be...”

“Correct. It’s got a unique matrix formation inside it formed from incredibly attuned pyreal.”

“Blackfire? If I may?” Queen Mother Elysa Strathelar asked, holding out her hand. I handed it over calmly, and she took it, lifting it up before clear blue eyes. “Well, this is most curious…” she murmured. “I recognize the material, although the appearance has changed slightly. This is made from the occasional black sphere that drops from obsidian and magma golums. Well, partially. As I recall, the black spheres were brought to a Stone Collector, who rewarded you with the polished version, an obsidian sphere. This was then brought to the Obsidian Enchantress near Hebian-To, who would carve it into this Wand for you.

“It was one of the rare ways to reliably gain a Wand that shot out Pyreal-grade War Magic without needing to be a mage,” she told me, handing it back. “The magic was indeed a darker crimson than normal fire magic, but I don’t remember it being black…”

“Blackfire is a type of shadowfire. It will damage things normally immune to fire, and defenses against fire aren’t fully functional against it.” I held it up for closer examination. “It feels similar to the magic I was seeing at Tou-Tou from the distance, and around the shades we met from there.”

“That… is a considerable change from the Wands I am familiar with,” the Queen Mother admitted carefully.

“It means the Tanada are working with the shades, if these allegations are true,” King Borelean growled.

“A response to the Assassins working with the Undead, and the Renegade Hea and Gotrok working with the virindi, no doubt,” Kris sniffed. “It also means an Obsidian Enchanter survived the Fall. Is that something you were aware of, Your Majesties?”

King and Queen Mother glanced at one other. “No, I’d not heard of that fact, but that does not mean others were unaware of it. I shall make inquiries…”

“Obviously the Tanada knew it, and may have kidnapped her directly. Someone has certainly taught her something new,” I pondered aloud. “A useful toy, able to use magic in a way an Isparian Caster cannot. Given the level of craftsmanship, I sincerely doubt this is made as easily as handing her an obsidian sphere…”

“Well, they did a superb job interrupting our meeting,” the King groused, looking at all the dead men. He was not disappointed, their bodies crumbling to ash as whatever rebirthing effect they were endowed with destroyed their previous shells.

A fwoosh from the main hall merely doused the place in vivus, and turned the bodies of the dead to white powder.

“It seems some lessons on how to keep the dead from coming back are in order,” Kris smiled dangerously. “Why don’t we return to our discussions while the Royal Scouts handle clean-up, and I’ll talk to you about some of the things I’m bringing to the Isparians of Dereth and their allies..”

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The present...

Sir Darvis’s wife had been the third person I’d performed a Regeneration on, after Lord Mick’s ring finger, and King Borelean’s arm. He’d been moved into the Royal Scouts thereafter, particularly the assassin-hunting arm of it.

Which meant…

“How far are we pushing the effort? To the landbridge, or along it all the way to the Direlands?” I had to ask, eyes focused on the narrow strip of land to the south of the sea in the center of Dereth. “The Tanada are supposedly running their main training camp in the canyons after the landbridge, but none of the trackers have pressed into that area, especially closer to the Direlands.”

“With Martine taking Candeth Keep back, our natural expansion stays in the south. We’ll be looking at other ways to re-link the North, presumably through Teleportation or similar things,” Briggs noted. “Clean the desert, and basically Osteth is ours again. Reinforcing it properly this time may be more difficult, but it's something we have to do… and we certainly aren’t going to resettle any areas that are not secured properly, unlike prior generations who settled anywhere a Deathstone made them unkillable.”

“Aye, that’s not what we are looking at. We need that buffer zone now, but the south is more than big enough to support the current expansion of the population. We’re going to do a Neutral Zone approach, which will cater to the adventurers involved on our end.”

“We’re going to have to raise Interdictions of some kind across the whole of the south to stop the inevitable Portal-born super-summoning or mass Teleporting sure to be coming, based on the history of our opponents.” I rubbed my temples and sighed.

“That can be done?” Briggs asked, startled. “Obelisks?” he inquired, going back to Argos’ infamous Bug Towers back in the game.

“Obelisks are akin to the floating anti-Shades pylons that Asheron put up.” I’d studied enough of the remains of those things to have their entire structure down pat. “Basically they stopped local spawns and any of the floating Shadow Towers coming in, and that was pretty much it. Also, they ate up a lot of time and energy, so he only bothered with them around the three starting training villages.”

“The best defense was blowing the damn thing up at Arwic,” Kris muttered, earning nods from all around. “How is this done?”

“Huh.” I considered the option a bit more intently than I had in the past. “True Pyramids. They are the most powerful form of magical architecture when made for that purpose, instead of just big edifices thrown up for aesthetics or edification of the dead or whatever.

“A forty-step Pyramid can throw up an Interdiction field eighty miles in radius, where no Summoning or dimensional movement can happen without being attuned to the Pyramid in question. It wouldn’t cut off something like Tou-Tou’s rupture, which is already in effect, but it could sure as Heaven keep it closed once it is in place.”

“Eighty miles in radius?” Briggs whistled slightly. “Through the Shoreward?”

“It’s not teleportation and blocked by water. It’s a strengthening of dimensional barriers. The Shoreward doesn’t block dimensional travel even now. There’s plenty of reports of Portals extending from the mainland to the islands, which we used to justify building the Jumps on the Vesayans.”

“Give me a circle eighty miles in radius, covering the Vesayans,” Briggs directed me.

I drew in a line eighty miles long from the outside of the Vesayans, up into the lands of Osteth, then picked a spot along that line coincidentally near where the Deru Tree between the Sho and Gharu’n lands of old had grown, and drew out that circle.

Well, it was a big circle. Dereth was under a two hundred mile square in size, so that circle basically swallowed all of Osteth.